


I Promise I Will Find You

by Xanadian



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Sad, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xanadian/pseuds/Xanadian
Summary: Maybe asking him to fuck off personally would be the first step to healing.
Relationships: Mai/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	I Promise I Will Find You

‘This relationship isn’t going to work magically, Zuko! This isn’t like a governance debate that we can just argue about all the time and not actually fix anything. You need to show some effort!’ Her exclamation was louder than she wanted it to be but maybe sheer volume would finally let her words not fall on deaf ears. 

‘You don’t think I’m putting in effort?’ his eyes were narrowed as he swung around to face her. The flames behind him roaring to heights that matched the anger peaking in his chest. ‘There’s only so much effort I have to distribute in one fucking day and I’m sorry if your menial complaints are not my damned priority.’

‘For Sozin’s sake just say it then!’ she yelled, even louder now than before, lashing out her unspent anger on her throat that hurt from the strain of letting out her words but holding back her tears. ‘Say that we aren’t going to work out so I can just stop chasing after you and trying to convince my mother that this is going to lead somewhere. Just say you’ve had enough!’

‘Those are your words, not mine.’ A curt statement; eyes refusing to acknowledge her. His raw emotions sacrificing control to trained diplomacy. A Fire Lord through and through.

‘No, they’re not my fucking words,’ her hands grabbed the front of his robes, the layers and layers of regality that separated him from her. The layers and layers of duties he could never take off. Not even when they were alone. The fabric bunched and crushed under her grasp, forcing the Fire Lord to look down at the foreigner that was clawing at his exterior to make a dent, to make a mark, to be let in. ‘ _You_ say them all the time. You say them when you forget about me for days and days, and you say them when you don’t tell me about the things that bother you, you say them every time I ask to be let in and you shut the door in my face.’

He looked away the moment she let go of him because even a Fire Lord could not look directly into the flames that burned in her clear, steely eyes.

‘Your eyes don’t lie, you’re just too much of a coward to say them out loud.' Her conclusions were rarely wrong. 

He stayed mum. What could he even say? Her words had scratched at the surface of an unhealed wound and the flesh beneath was rotting.

Her voice again. Small and desperate like he had never heard it. ‘Please do me a favour and say it. Just say that it’s over. I’m begging you,’ to not say it. To stop me from leaving. To stop us from falling apart. To say you love me and to tell me we can fix it. 

‘It’s over, Mai.’

* * *

It was a wonderful day, light and breezy. She didn’t know if it was a rarely pleasant day or if the weather had turned in the Fire Nation since the day the Fire Lord had let go of a liability. She didn’t know because for the past seven days whenever she opened her eyes she only saw the ceiling of her room.

She had come out for the first time in days because the maid had informed her that the Fire Lord had come to see her. She had opened her mouth instantly to demand that he be asked to leave, but the hopeful eyes of the caretaker who had watched Mai wallow in her sorrow for days made it too painful for her to deny the invitation outright.

Maybe asking him to fuck off personally would be the first step to healing.

She had asked to meet him in the guest parlour of her house. The giant ballroom peppered with richly cushioned divans was separated down the centre with a flowing wall of light translucent gossamer fabric. Like other traditional Fire Nation homes, Mai’s too tried to desperately hold on to the shadow of outdated traditions like this one where men and women were segregated in a gathering by a wall of fabric. Despite Mai's repeated callouts her mother had tried to preserve the tradition in her home and for the first time, Mai was loath to accept that she was thankful for her mother’s irrational archaicism.

She sat down on a settee that was touching backs with another settee on the other side, a thin film of the floaty fabric separating the two pieces of furniture and separating Mai and the Fire Lord.

‘You’re really not going to let me see you?’ he asked.

‘I think it’s for the best.’ They were both turned to the side, seeing only halves of each other’s silhouettes. He had come without his crown.

‘How have you been?’ She hated that she could hear the concern in his words. Hated that she could tell it wasn’t just pity.

A non-committal sound escaped her lips because he didn’t deserve to know the details.

‘I read your letter,’ he continued. ‘I understand it’s completely your decision to want to leave the Fire Nation but I can’t help but think it has to do with us…us…separating and I don’t want you to move on my account.’

‘Well, I’m moving.’ She swore she was going to ask him to leave. Why hadn’t she asked him to leave?

The wind shuffled the fabric between them. It shimmied softly, offering its input on their misery while the two sat in silence.

‘I also heard that your mother is trying to get you married,’ his face was beside hers, separated by a veil yet so close. She could hear the panting in his breath. ‘Mai, I swear I didn’t know it was going to be like this, I’ll do whatever I can to stop a marriage if you don’t want to do it and I know you don’t –

‘My battles are not your battles anymore, Zuko. I’ll manage.’

‘Mai, I’m sorry. About everything. I’ve been so horrible to you but I really do love you. Nothing was fake, nothing was a lie. I always have and I always will love you but I just don’t think either of us can continue –

‘It just fucking hurts. So bad.’ Mai interrupted. The wind was not cooperating anymore; her face was burning up again.

‘Zuko, I’ve never been so lost,’ Confessions spilt out before she could withhold them. Everything she had repeated to herself lying helpless in her bed was lining up on her tongue. ‘I know it’s my fault for pinning all I had to you. For cutting everyone else off my life save for you. For opening up to you and you alone, because now you’re gone and I don’t have anyone to go to.’ She had thought of all the horrible things she would say to him. All the things only she knew about him that she could hurt him with to get back at him and still the words that came out were not from Vengeful Mai, were not from Vindictive Mai. They were from Injured and Confused Mai.

‘I don’t have anyone to talk to because I only ever _really_ talked to you. I don’t have anyone to share my pain with because I’ve never done that with anyone else before so I don’t know how and now I’m even more scared to.’ Her voice quivered; she was asking for help in the only place she had ever asked for help before.

‘It’s really not your fault and I’m sorry if I’m saying the wrong things, I just don’t know what to do with myself.’ She hunched forward into her lap and her palms covered her eyes, catching the pool of tears that sprung forth.

He responded, shifting in his seat as he turned towards her to see more of her while she turned away from him. 

‘I’m so sorry Mai.’ ‘You’re not alone.’

She dragged her wet hands over her eyes and her trembling lips, dispensing her warm tears all over her face.

‘I’m still here. You can talk to me.’

She blinked down at her hands in concern wondering if she had smeared her face with the kohl from her eyes, but was relieved to note she had learned her lesson from the first few days and just given up on kohl all together.

‘I’m still your best friend.’

A sharp intake of breath, cut into soft hiccups that rose from her chest. ‘And I really thought I’d healed from the time you left me behind but all of that came right back and I know I shouldn’t be bitter that you left me and found a whole new world and purpose and a family all on your own but I _am_.’ More darned confessions. More sobs followed the release of this admission buried so deeply in her heart. These were old sobs, not from today, not from the past week. These were from years ago. They were putrid and stale and sour.

‘I’m so sorry.’ There was no sick satisfaction in the sound of his voice crumbling. She really wished there was. 

‘I’m so bitter because you forgot me and-and I thought we were in this together. You said that’ she reminded with her soft, pitched wails, ‘You said we were in this together and that we were going to make our own little space to live in and screw the rest of the world. I remember Zuko because I thought about that all the time and I can’t believe I thought you and I were going to make that happen this whole time, but you’d already moved on from it years ago.’ The base of her palms ground into the settee beside her, holding up her trembling shoulders and the crushing weight of her loneliness. 

‘I wanted to bring you along, Mai. I really did. I’m just very bad at doing the right thing.’ Zuko sniffled.

‘I know you have an insane amount of things to deal with and I could’ve never even handled the all things you need to look after but forgive me because I’m just going to be selfish about myself right now. I haven’t done that in a while. You don’t have to listen to any of this -

‘I want to. I know I fucked up.’

Shuffling. Shifting. She felt pressure on her shoulder. Zuko shifted to lay his head on her shoulder, trying to warp the silken barrier between them that wrapped around the crown of his head as he nuzzled into Mai’s shoulder.

And she lay her head on his. Her tears didn’t stop, drenching the fabric and working through the thin film to dampen his ears tucked under her cheekbone. He was finally listening.

Sniffles. Sobs. They were both holding back.

She pulled her legs up on to the settee, hoping he wouldn’t leave soon and he didn’t.

Many minutes passed. Their final moments darkened by the knowledge that this would all be over soon for good.

‘I don’t know how I’m going to live without you.’ He spoke.

‘Are we going to be okay?’ He was far better at convincing with lies than she had ever been.

‘Yes, we’re going to be better than we ever were,’ He replied.

‘Am I going to find myself like you and Ty Lee did? Because I really, really want to.’ Mai pulled her legs close, hiding her tear-stained face in the sheets of her bed. Once again, her parents had denied her permission to go and spend the night with her friends. Her friends from the Academy along with Azula, Ty Lee and Zuko were always going away and having fun, crazy adventures. Going on trips and discovering things about the world and themselves. Bonding over strange occurrences in the wild and over teenage dreams. Mai never went because her parents didn’t think it was proper. It was far more proper for her to hole herself up in her room each night and throw knives in sync with the harmony of her parents yelling at each other downstairs.

She was always left behind. Just her and her knives. 

‘You’re going to find yourself and you’re going to be the best version of yourself. A far better version than you would have ever been with me.’

‘And then I want you to come and find me,’ she said, nuzzling her head over his. Feeling his unkempt hair on her cheeks through the wispy fabric. ‘I want to show off the new and improved me. Want to show you what you missed out on.’

Both chuckled. Neither was happy. 

‘I promise I will find you.’


End file.
